Mount Holyoke Professor: American Gun Owners Are Insane

How would Professor Moran know American gun owners are insane? Because he’s an expert on the insanity defense! (And the electric chair but let’s not go there. Literally.) I wonder if he knows anything about the cognitive process known as projection. And I quote, “People are resistant to facts. People don’t care what the data shows. They feel they know differently. Not everyone is swayed by the reality that’s really out there. They’re swayed by the reality they’ve created or that they believe is out there. And they all feel that they’re the exception.” And that’s why he carries a SIG! JK. It’s a Glock. JK again. Moran’s only defense against pro-gun loons: a reputation for being scatterbrained and a rapier wit. En garde!

I just added the 16th down vote, I believe. The disabling of comments is telling – you can tell a lot from comments. Unfortunately, the speaker in question is so arrogant as to not need them. I wonder if history professors hold as many academics opposed to the 2A. That’s entirely possible in a world where BHO can speak anti-2A rhetoric in Chicago, which is a bastion of gun control and has an exceptionally high murder rate.

Did he ask why cops carry guns? I forget the article now, but I believe that statistically, when it comes to mishandling a gun, the rate is roughly the same for LEOs and non-LEOs. Law abiding citizens, who are not law enforcement, are no more likely to mishandle a gun than a trained officer. So how come it’s ok for cops to have guns, but not anybody else?

If this bozo professor was at all correct, we could say the same thing about cops: they claim to use guns in self-defense, but they’re just delusional about it; they’ll just end up shooting themselves. Therefore, we should disarm the cops as well, no? After all, we don’t want them to be nothing but a threat to themselves and to everybody else.

This guy is more proof that going to college is a waste of money. And he probably has tenure!!!

Josh, I think that’s an important question that I do not see addressed on TV debates anywhere near enough. EVERY anti-gun type implies and, apparently, fully believes that every single time an armed citizen presents a firearm that the person on the other end dies. Came up last night on “the five” on Fox, when the liberal dude commented on the problem of date rape by saying that we also can’t have women shooting their dates dead as soon as they try to put the moves on. Obviously that’s insulting but it also furthers the belief that “using” a gun means firing it.

THAT’S NOT THE CASE. From reading years and years of The Armed Citizen reports, I can say that most successful DGU’s I have seen do NOT involve a single shot being fired. Just the presentation of a gun is usually enough to completely stop the criminal act, and is a legitimate, common way to use a gun for one’s defense.

Of course, that would completely fly in the face of the anti-gun crowd trying to make gun owners look like trigger-happy, wild, reckless rednecks.

I want the stat. I think it’s an important one for all of us to have. I want to know what percentage of defensive gun uses involve no discharge of a firearm at all. They are effective tools on a level that the anti- crowd does not want to understand.

I believe you’re correct, only a very small percentage of DGUs involve a gun being discharged. The vast majority do not, hence they go unreported. I believe that, at least under Clinton, the government defined a defensive gun use as one where the attacker / intruder was killed. Obviously most DGUs do not involve deadly shootings, so the statistics cannot be very accurate. In turn the government will come out and claim that because there are so few DGUs (as per their own strict definition above), there’s no need for you to own a gun after all.

Do the accounts we refer to have to be firsthand to be relevant? If so, have you, Mikey, ever been the victim of a negligent discharge or have you ever been assaulted with a firearm buy a law-abiding citizen or any the other things you fear? If not, your arguments and fears are based on accounts and experiences of others and not firsthand experience and that’s fine. Who cares how your opinion is formed? But for the sake of balanced discussion, if you demand firsthand accounts from us, then we expect them from you. Your rule (firsthand account rule), not ours.

uncommon_sense, I don’t recall the anonymous comment you’re referring to, but are you saying you accept that low of a number, 10s of thousands? That’s a big drop from the 2.5 million some of your friends love to banter about.

Plus, 10s of thousands cannot stand up to the 100s of thousands of crimes committed with guns every year. That’s why so many of you adamantly hold onto the larger figures, however nonsensical. You need them in order to maintain the false dictum that guns do more good than harm. They don’t. You lose.

Of the million visitors, do you suppose they all post? And if so, have you read every post on here? Recently a well documented DGU occurred in Georgia, but I don’t recall the attacked woman posting about it here. To you, it didn’t happen. I know in your eyes, if you acknowledge the story at all, the career felon who chased the woman and her children into a crawl space with a crowbar, probably had only stopped for tea.
I never miss your point, but you’ve missed mine. Again, please share some of your firsthand firearm victim stories. You must have some.

Mikeb, while I agree with propaganda professor most of the time, I just dont on the gun control issue because he is in the same crowd that

1.) bashes Kleck’s work while refusing to address the FBI and CDCs (1994) studies, which interestingly paints a picture that is still different than the joke of 5,000 dgus a year.

2.) Balks at the idea of individual self defense because well all magically become a violence-free utopia one of these days.

3.) demonizes the NRA, painting them as a omnipresent lobbying group that controls everybody. Nothing could be farther than the truth: there are 80 million known gun users in the US. The NRA is composed of 4.5 million of them. Paltry to say the least.

4.) Is against the individual right concept that is the 2nd amendment (somehow we are supposed to accept that the 2nd amendment is collective while the rest of the Bill of Rights are individual. LOL. sure).

5.) paints all gun owners that value their rights as racist, religious nutjobs that just want to arbitrarily overthrow the government. Never mind the fact that liberals also own black semi-automatics and also fear a tyrannical government.

6.) Assumes we worship Kleck’s study like the holy grail itself. Nothing could be further than the truth.

Others have effectively drawn a huge question mark over the validity over the methods used to conclude there are only 500-1000 DGUs a year. In MikeB’s citation

ST said, “In the past I’ve had to reach for my gun two times in criminal encounters.” One he didn’t describe at all, the other was a questionable DGU, at best.

Like many supposed DGU incidents, ST may have only imagined there was criminal intent. The guy was approaching his car with a hand hidden from view. That’s enough for believing lethal threat is coming?

@Mikeb: Fair enough. I didn’t film it or report it. Maybe I should have to get it on the books, even if talking to some city cops (legal carrier or not) is about as risky as dealing with muggers.

Those of us who support individuals having the choice to be armed accept that such events are not rare, which is one reason many of us carry. Those on the other side dismiss such reports out of hand. To be expected.

You have missed all of the accounts here and on NPR, of all places. I don’t talk about mine and a lot of people don’t want to talk about theirs. You could look at the official numbers from the DOJ, but you won’t, or you will come up with some reason why they are wrong. You simply fail to believe some people have a spine and are ready, willing and able to take care of themselves. Which is a completely alien concept to someone like you.

Bill, I have looked at the numbers and I understand that when 95% is based on word of mouth the whole thing is tainted. What percentage of that 95% do you think was really necessary? Even among the ones where shots were fired you’ve got many that were unnecessary or even criminal.

The DGU argument is one of your weakest. You should stick with, “because I like guns,” and leave it at that.

Too funny, Robert. I laughed out loud three times while reading your commentary. And guys like this deserve to be laughed at. Progressives think that they know something about everything because they are Progressives. They don’t need facts or reasons; they certainly don’t need debate. They’re Progressives, and that qualifies them to regulate the rest of us in any way on any matter. It’s astonishing.

You have to keep in mind that leftists are often (not always) rationalists and moral relativists. If the group believes it, it’s true by definition. You can always spot them because they appeal to authority (or attack the speaker) rather than deal with the substance of arguments. “Bah, you heard that on Fox.”

Of course, many use these tactics deliberately, consciously knowing what they are doing.

Actually it does, sixpack. That’s why the academic world is predominately for gun control. The opposite is true. Most gun rights supporters are towards the other end of the intelligent/educated spectrum. I realize there are exceptions who post and comment here, but the average is what it is. You know the type.

No, of course I’m not suggesting that only credentialed intellectuals should have rights, I’m saying it’s wrong for you guys to disparage them as bumbling idiots. Because of their intellectual and academic advancement, they should be taken seriously.

I will take them seriously when they have proven that their experiences are relevant and meaningful. This goes for everyone — credentialed or not. Shouting in an echo chamber doesn’t mean you have something important to say.

As an academic scientist, allow me to offer some personal experience, for what it’s worth. The ivory tower leans left (and increasingly more so as time goes on) due in large part to self-selection.

You don’t get hired in departments (and certainly don’t get retained and promoted) if you express conservative ideas. There are exceptions, but it’s pretty much “don’t ask, don’t tell.” I personally believe that politics should be left entirely out of science, but many of my colleagues don’t feel that way. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had to bite the hell out of my tongue. Total intellectual freedom, as long as you think like they do.

Then, after academics surround themselves by like-minded people, they falsely conclude that all intellectuals think the same way, which reinforces their illusions of superiority.

Most of the smart conservatives I know I know are in the private sector.

I guess I should have stated it this way, highly intelligent, but rigid in thinking and unwilling to entertain other information or viewpoints. Do you know why companies like Costco and Dyson hire people fresh out of college? Because they have not been taught how to think by another corporate entity. Jane Goodall was hired without a degree and studied primates. Why was she successful? Probably because she was not trained in a certain way of conducting research. Does this mean education is bad? Not at all! But, it does mean that being in an organization for long periods of time can affect perceptions. It would be like spending all of our time talking to only TTAG people. We are not exposing ourselves to other information.

How do you stop a tank? You dont. You wait for the soldier/law enforcement/gov official/enemy to get off work for the day, follow him home, then execute offensive asymetrical/guerrilla warfare tactics. This libtard knows that (leftists wrote the book on anarchy) but feigns ignorance because it comes into conflict with his commie goals. Doctor my ass (socialogy). Lumping gang bangers and other worthless data into home defense totals to show a higher percentage of danger for the gun owner is garbage statistic.

What an ivory tower loon. I live in Canada, and I would tell the good professor that the reason I own guns is because I CAN. I don’t own them first and foremost for self defense. (We canucks aren’t supposed to think like that). I own them because, like my American cousins, I believe it is my right to do so. They are, after all, a legal product, like any other. Of course, my government considers firearm ownership a privilege, and on this we must disagree. Hopefully, some day they will come to see it my way, but I’m not holding my breath.

Dudly Doright, Belleview is calling, better answer fast. The reality disconnect he speaks of occurs because, well, he’s nuts. Check with the young Texas man to see how well a defensive handgun does, correction, probably should talk to the next of kin, Randy

And just a few hours ago I contacted the TTAG folks (and Mr. Farago kindly responded, I was shocked) about the possibility that we 2nd Amendment folks might be missing the bus by not trying harder to include those who don’t understand us and shifting our argument to one of Class rather than Politics…

Then comes this dipshit, Dr. IknowItAllCuzIReadItInABook.

Now my stance is all shot to hell cuz I just wanna slap this fookin’ academic in the face.

WTH does someone like this slack ass know about gun culture?

Here’s someone who has never HAD to hunt for food (yes, I have and so have many of those who read TTAG (maybe not many who post here)). Here’s someone who has never had to defend themselves from anything more than the distraction of an unruly Graduate Assistant who got his lunch order wrong. Here’s someone who has no idea about what it is to be a part of a heritage that prides itself on a family full of patriots who, either willingly or by mandate, have defended the rights that he enjoys though he doesn’t understand.

Whe the F**K does he he think he is to so dismissively brush off an undeniable RIGHT with a smirk and a shake of his head?

I’ve always said, those who can? DO! Those who can’t? Teach.

If he knew one damn thing about Criminology he’d be chasing down the bad guys, or putting them in jail.

I have his contact page, thank you TTAG, right here in front of me and I’m tempted…I want to let him have it so bad! I admit, I’m pausing long enough to consider what government list I’ll wind up on if I let this POS have it.

I recently viewed a YouTube video where you implied that the gun culture of self defense in the United States is “insane.” Apparently, gun owners are unaware of “facts” which indicate that the ownership of a firearm for defense against violence or tyranny is insane. I am writing to you because I am unaware of the facts to which you are referring. I am aware that more than 260 million people were murdered by the governments of Germany, USSR, N. Korea, PRC, North Korea, etc. Our nation, if you recall, was created as an armed response to tyranny by Great Britain.

Are you referring to the peaceful benefits of gun control in Chicago, NYC, or Mexico?

What factual argument would you present against a carjacker or other assailant that would be as effective as a .40 caliber handgun?

One of my majors was in Sociology. If you have any examples where civilian disarmament caused a decrease in overall violence I would be very interested in them.

Well la de damn da . I was waiting on a comment from a luminary at one of the Five Colleges to bestow us with but a modicum of wisdom from their overflowing fountain of knowledge. This fountain, by the way, produces a straw-colored runoff smelling strongly of asparagus. I don’t even need to watch the video, I know the recycled, self-serving smut that his kind spouts. I received my doctorate from one of the five colleges (hard science, not what passes for sociology there), I should know. Worst five years of my life. I’m thankful though, if anything, my time there drove me solidly into the arms of libertairianism.

Go ahead, ask me anything about the way these people think…….if your in the mood for a good horror story.

Without exception every psych prof I had in college was very obviously attracted to the field in search of solutions to their own dysfunction. They never really find those solutions, they just imagine that they have. (They make a lot of stuff up) Worse, they compete with each other and in the process they reach some really strange conclusions based on clusterthinking .

Seriously, though, this is EXACTLY why the NRA and others are very scared of Obama’s attempt to give authority to all sorts of mental health professionals — even nurses! — to determine who is mentally unfit to own a gun. No actual court adjudication necessary; just the statement of a government or private mental heath professional. When you have people like Moron who will say, “You actually think you need a gun to defend yourself? Well, you’re clearly insane.” then we have a major, major problem. The gov’t can have anybody and everybody deemed mentally unfit and it’s done.

“If it were the case that I was searching for an example of the clear distinctions to be made between the words ‘actuality’ and ‘reality’ — the former, of course implying what actually IS, and the latter most specific to human perception, or say absence thereof — after listening to the statements made by the good professor, I could say without any reservation whatsoever, my search had just ended.”
Gw

Afghan insurgency a fantasy world, Mikeb302000? Why don’t you enlist and take a tour (of duty) of Afghanistan and report back to us what happens when your vehicle drives over a discarded MRE wrapper. From your imaginary world describe to us what it means to have an MRE wrapper disguising a contact switch wired to a car battery, an iron pipe and a copper plate?

Nick, I’m not questioning that it’s real and that it happened. I’m questioning your applying it to gun ownership in the US. The fighting-off-tyranny reason for gun ownership is the stuff of mentally ill lunatics.

I suppose the founders of this nation were mentally ill lunatics when they ground down the most powerful military on earth of the time. They must have been completely insane to protect the rights of the people to retain the means to do so again if ever needed.

You really have no clue what a small determined group of fighters is capable of, even when faced with overwhelming opposition. Put the kool-aid down and do a little research. Your mind has obviously been softened by the lack of critical thinking.

That’s a highly intuitive-yet-wrong conclusion. The value of an armed citizenry isn’t in actually fighting the regime, but in its deterrent effect.

Yes, an ad hoc militia is no match for a trained army, but the army will need to be paid and supplied, and it will take casualties – perhaps many casualties. And that’s the point. It’s the same principle as maritime commerce raiding. You’re not going to outright defeat the powerful surface navy with your submarines, but with luck and skill you can make the effort so expensive for them that they’ll rationally choose to negotiate with you rather than continue the war. The majority of insurgencies achieve that goal to a greater or lesser extent.

You should support the 2nd Amendment on that basis alone, since it helps prevent political violence even in the face of serious political discord.

The intent of the 2A is clear enough. The men who wrote it were not lunatics. Government tyranny could not happen in the US? Why not? Our rights are being stripped away daily. Our President and our governors continually by pass Congress with “Messages of Necessity” and “Executive Orders.” Our small town police departments are being equipped with military gear and vehicles, courtesy of the federal government. No-knock warrants are becoming more and more frequent. We keep seeing new, redundant enforcement agencies.
Look at the Dorner incident. Do you think there was ever a chance of due process. Citizens were being shot at, just in case it was him.
To me, the mentally deficient are those who see this and don’t stop to wonder what is happening around them.

I vote and write my reps–working in a law-abiding manner. This is the system we have. The validity of that system is diminishing, though. Maybe you didn’t notice while on your drug-addled road to righteousness.

Then it would be ridiculously stupid to try to take their guns, wouldn’t it? I mean, if you are serious (and anyone who has spent time on this site knows how dully serious you are) about wanting to prevent gun violence, then surely wanting to go around taking all the scary guns from the scary gun owners would just make the scary gun owners say “the hell with it, blaze of glory time”, right?

Yep, they would almost certainly lose, but a lot of employees of the government would get killed along with them.

Sorry, Mikey, the stuff of mental illness is your firm belief the State is God and you have the absolute right to force your twisted fantasies on the rest of us. But, you refuse to do it yourself! You want other people, carrying the very guns you claim to despise so much, to put themselves in harm’s way assaulting otherwise law-abiding citizens, your brothers and sisters. Now that is SICK. Another prime example of the sissification of the American male.

AHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAA!! Good one Mikey. Coming from a person who lives his entire life inside an ivory tower bubble! And who as yet to show any proof his is really a man. I kind of like his idea, we don’t know if you are girly man, a teenager, this “professor’s” wife or just a pure Utopian Authoritarian. Why don’t YOU post some proof of who you really are? All we know of you is you are a simple minded troll. We need proof of any substantive reason we should even listen to you.

I always love scumbags like this, because they’re precisely the reason the 2A exists and why it’s so important: because people like him exist in the world. We need to hear from sub-humans like this every now and then to reaffirm why we need to be able to defend ourselves from criminals, tyrants, and ultimately, our neighbors (I refuse to use the term countrymen).

I’d love to hear is disarmament plan. No, there is no tyranny, it’s just the government taking your private property. No really, there are no govt. agents in your home rifling through your stuff. This is not tyranny.

“What are they going to do with an assault rifle when a tank pulls up?”

Oh, I don’t know, lets ask the VCA in Vietnam, and the islamic insurgents in Afghanistan what they do when a tank shows up.

This guy hasn’t a clue about military strategy and tactics. I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure a few million armed civilians could easily seize domestic fuel sources. A tank or drone is pretty ineffective without fuel.

Next you seize and hold shipping ports to prevent the import of fuel. I’m sure the military could try to get fuel from other countries, but thanks to the friends we’ve made overseas, other countries might think twice about supplying the US military with fuel during a civil insurrection.

Now I realize all of this is academic and highly unlikely. But academic scenarios also apply to the pro-gun argument. My academic question for academic types is this:

Does a law-abiding citizen giving up his natural-born right to self-defense make society as a whole safer?

Last year 32,367 people died in automobile deaths. Surely my driving privilege and mere presence on the road increases the risks for all those around me. Should we all give up the privilege of driving simply because it increases the risks for those around us?

There is a very low probability I will collect on my life insurance, file a claim for my car insurance, use my homeowner’s insurance, or even use my fire extinguisher, yet I have all those protections and am encouraged, even by law, to have them.

Every single self-defense trainer will thoroughly explain the decision-making process and possible consequences of escalating a conflict through various phases. If you shine a bright flashlight you have a low escalation. If you bring out a knife you are escalating the conflict. If you bring out a gun you are further escalating the conflict. In order to even consider escalating the conflict most individuals understand the potential consequences, but feel the consequences of not escalating are more dangerous. It seems people like Dr. Moran (unfortunate name) think gun owners believe pulling out a gun will make their problems disappear. Maybe some are under that delusion, I can’t speak for everyone, but not having the option to escalate puts you, your property, and everyone around you at the mercy of a criminal, and the latest trend seems to be killing off witnesses.

I would like to know what “the data shows” as well and how that is being framed. More guns equals more gun deaths, statistically that is an inevitability. 1 million gun owners with a gun accident and homicide rate of .005% is 5000 incidents. 1 thousand gun owners with a gun accident and homicide rate of 50% is 500 incidents. That’s just the math and generally why the total number is largely irrelevant. The real question is if more guns equals less crime, and when I look at that I look for my situation, a national statistic is not going to reflect my situation because ironically the high gun control areas, like NYC and Chicago, inflate those numbers.

I agree with him that we need to work on gun culture. We need to expand gun culture and move towards positive gun community. The main problem I see is a lack of education that makes guns seem scary due to media depiction. When media, like action movies and news reports, are your primary educator there is a huge problem. I think we also need to work on academic culture because there is such a large divide between academia (the numbers) and the real world. You can make the numbers say whatever you want them to say by the way you frame the statistics, that’s stats 101.

I think the “Like” scale shows the acceptance of that video. Right now it’s 2 likes and 100 dislikes. Cut out the author “like” and you get 100:1 against.

Every single genocide in the last 100+ years has been preceded by gun confiscation.

At times it wasn’t even the government that carried out the confiscation of firearms that conducted the genocide later on. The particular government that conducts the genocide just happened to come upon a group of people who couldn’t fight back.

The Khmer Rouge came to power in 1970, but gun confiscation in Cambodia dated back to 1938.

Uganda had gun control imposed upon it by the British in 1955, in 1971, Idi Amin seized power, and killed about 300,000 unarmed men women and children.

Nations that have been disarmed are now only a minor government-change away from genocide…

Hell, moving on, the Ottoman Turks had a really sick system for taken the guns of the Armenians: Secret quotas.

The Armenian communities had to turn over a certain number of firearms to the authorities. A number which wasn’t published.

If the number of guns turned in was below that quota, the Armenian leaders were arrested for hiding the guns that weren’t turned in. If the number of guns turned in was higher than the quota, the Armenian leaders were arrested for hoarding guns that were turned in.

Those Armenian leaders, along with 1.15 million other Armenians were never seen again.

The classic example:

“Jews (§ 5 of the First Regulations of the German Citizenship Law of 14 November 1935, Reichsgesetzblatt 1, p. 1332) are prohibited from acquiring. Possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons. Those now possessing weapons and ammunition are at once to turn them over to the local police authority.”

Afghanistan is one good example of gun ownership stopping a genocide. In Eastern Europe, when the Soviet Union invaded, mass starvation followed when groups of people were cut off from food supplies. This didn’t happen in Afghanistan because they were armed to the teeth, and the Afghan Constitution had just one section regarding guns: “It is illegal to knowingly give guns to a criminal.”

Prof needs to live in some of our “finer neighborhoods”, walk the streets in some of our better “areas” at night, drive some back alleys i have been. Address some of our more interesting citizens in those circumstances while dressed like the elitist he is, wearing a little bling.